Mid September in DC

It rained today. It’s news as it is the first rainy day since we got here a month ago. I called a friend in Oregon to tell him I knew now what he felt like after not seeing the sun for four hours. Funny guy huh?

We are tied up at Gangplank Marina right down the street from the Jefferson Memorial and just a few blocks from the mall and life is good. We ride the bikes up just three blocks to the Fish Market for fresh seafood a couple of times a week and there are two farmers markets close by. There are some really cool places to walk and we walk or ride the dogs up to 5 times a day.

Shiloh is a 14 month old Golden Retriever who has joined us for three months to help demonstrate to these federal government employees what a Service Dogs do as we try to convince them to pledge donations to paws4vets. She is cute, lively and a good dog but has some issues making it all the way off the dock before she pees. It is a little embarrassing when she stops to pee right in front of someone’s boat just as they are arriving or leaving. That’s why I always allow Shelly to hold her leash and I take Goose.

We are getting out as much as we can to see what we have not yet seen. The Marine monument with the 32 foot tall bronze replica of raising the flag at Iwo Jima. Roosevelt Island Park out in the middle of the Potomac River with 88 acres of trails. Meridian Park in NE DC where there is a 75 ft drop in elevation and some really cool (though neglected) cascading pools and statues. This is where Le Enfant (designer of DC) laid the true North/South meridian line that all of DC is designed around.

We visited Great Falls Md where George Washington’s canal company had to build 5 locks close together to get around the 45 foot drop in the river when they built the canal from the tidal waters of the Chesapeake at DC all the way to the Ohio River to bring trade. The railroads came before they got it done but it is still an amazing feat.

And of course for work we go to events at places we would not normally be allowed. The Pentagon, CIA headquarters, Museum of Buildings, Bureau of Prisons HQ, EPA, FEMA etc. If you could only see what we see about the people running these places…

Another benefit for us this year is to watch firsthand the panic in this town as people start to realize life around here might be a little different come next January. My Make America Great Again hat is a great conversation starter to say the least.

Truthfully though, we are already talking about leaving and what is next. I am bad enough on my own, but after 35 years I think I have infected Shelly with the same yearning to be moving.

Shelly finished another one of her cool ‘sheet’ rugs. She is so talented!

Both of us are working hard on rebuilding our two websites – webwidewizards.com and miamiphillips.com – and it is a ton of work! We are attempting to organize years of content, images and video where we can get to it easily.

Plus we are always looking for more web clients and needed to update the sites for marketing.

And to finish off this post here is a video of our last day of the summer sailing around the Chesapeake. next time we go sailing it will be Thanksgiving, probably cold – and we will be heading back to Florida!